Last time we looked at some of the crazy which fuels the conservative opposition in America. But if the American Right is a comedy of the absurd the left is tragedy. Much noise has been made accusing the left of communist ambitions and indeed it might have been easier to drain the Aral sea than it is to get health reform passed. That is the tragedy of the modern intellectual left who seek to "guide the invisible hand of the market": control. They, perhaps in academic innocence, perhaps in a sort of Nietzsche-esque "will to power", overestimate the effect of human action and underestimate the complexity of its consequences. That Obama's head of communication Anita Dunn quotes Mao Tse-tung at length to high school students, however moving or ironic the speech might have been in a more appropriate forum, is just a symptom of this gap between public opinion and the white house's internal ideology. Of course the Obama administration is not the Shining Path and anyone who tells you it is is selling something; Obama's team has definitely confused the Academy with the political arena. The speech in question and the obligatory return shot from the right with its predictable call for "simpler times":
"simpler times":
Moore Turon
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